Between 1970 and 1988, Richard Woolley created a body of exciting and challenging work that has remained almost impossible to see until now.
Tackling controversial themes, such as class, race, sexuality and the human instinct for violence, Woolley directed a number of radical and uncompromising films, which explore the ways we relate to, and ultimately destroy, one another even as we strive to develop the means to better understand and communicate with those around us.
This collection offers the long-overdue opportunity to experience first-hand the power of such extraordinary and unique films as: 1976’s Illusive Crime, which caused outrage upon its release; Telling Tales, the much acclaimed soap-meets-Straub debut feature from 1978; 1981’s controversial Brothers and Sisters, set against a backdrop of Yorkshire Ripper-style murders; and Woolley’s final film, Girl from the South(1988) that views black Britons through the prism of an interracial relationship.
"Continuously interesting…formally adroit and persuasively acted"
The Observer
Extras
Audio commentary on Brothers and Sisters and Telling Tales (2011): never-before-released audio commentaries by director Richard Woolley
Kniephofstrasse (1973, 24 mins): complex but compelling formalist film, which investigates the relationship between sound and image
Drinnen und Draussen / Inside and Outside (1974, 34 mins): experimental narrative film exploring conformity in East and West Germany
Waiting for Alan (1984, 42 mins): unconventional, minutely observed domestic drama centred on the ritualised boredom of a middle- class housewife
Video interviews with Richard Woolley (79 mins total): split over 4 discs, Richard Woolley discusses his career and films
Optional English hard-of-hearing subtitles on all four features
Booklet featuring an essay by Anthony Neild and Richard Woolley’s article ‘Writer as Director: a Case study – Brothers and Sisters’, published in the Screenwriters Research Network's Journal of Screenwriting in 2015
